


true catch

by blackeyedblonde



Category: True Detective
Genre: Between 2002/2012 Events, Borderline crack, Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-26
Updated: 2014-06-26
Packaged: 2018-02-06 08:36:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1851550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackeyedblonde/pseuds/blackeyedblonde
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a Friday night in 2005 and Marty is in for a rollicking round of channel surfing. After settling on Discovery, it turns out <em>The Deadliest Catch</em> just so happens to be featuring a certain fishing boat in Alaska...</p>
            </blockquote>





	true catch

**Author's Note:**

> This admittedly happened while I was pretty buzzed late last night, so please don't think it's anything serious or my hallmark prose. NO SHAME.

Sometime in 2005, Marty’s home alone on a Friday night (because what the fuck’s new) and stationed steadfast in front of the television. He’s halfway through a sixer and the remnants of some fuckup of a spinach salad sit abandoned on a nearby dinner tray, mocking him with its little pecan pieces and feta cheese, some kind of hoity-toity business that would taste better only if it were drowned in ranch dressing.

Channel surfing has so far proven uneventful but he perseveres until he hits Discovery. It’s on commercial and he fidgets around with the papers on the coffee table in the meantime, resolving to clean out some old magazines and newspapers sooner or later, because since when did he get _Better Homes and Gardens_ delivered to the house?

When the airing show starts back he doesn’t look up right away except to throw a quick surveying glance at the screen. _The Deadliest Catch_ is on, and he doesn’t regularly watch this program but the guys sometimes talk about it at work like it’s the next great American West, so he lets it run aloud while he totes off the abomination salad to the garbage disposal in the kitchen.

Easing back down on the couch, he catches wind of what the boat crew is doing. Lobster trawling in Alaska, it’s pissing rain in sheets, and everybody’s buttoned and bundled up tight into bright orange slicker suits. Guys keep yelling to one another as they slide and maneuver lobster traps across deck, and maybe this isn’t Marty’s kind of thing but he appreciates the background noise, so he cracks open his laptop and scrolls through the email equivalent of the shit stacked up on his coffee table.

Two minutes later, the narrator is throwing out the word “rust” with some other fishing jargon, but Marty doesn’t look up just yet, won’t give in to how the word in any shape or form still yanks some invisible string nailed inside his chest. But then here it comes again, though this time it’s followed up by a familiar voice yelling, “God damn, would y’all get this fucking camera out of my face?”

Marty freezes and looks up at the screen, heart dropped down like a lead weight into the pit of his stomach.

_It sounds like—?_

But no, this isn’t, it can’t be—but holy shit it is, and Rust motherfuckin’ Cohle is standing there zipped up into a parka, long wisps of hair sticking haphazard out of his hood with a damp cigarette stub hanging lax from the corner of his mouth. On a fishing boat in the middle of the Alaskan sea, giving a rope line to the traps and cussing a blue streak at the camera man.

“Yeah I signed a fucking waiver, so I could keep my fuckin’ job,” he says amidst a staccato flurry of censor beeps, turning back away from the camera. He calls out to a fellow fisherman further down the deck, and whatever comes out of his mouth next Marty can’t figure because the censor rings out over about five straight seconds of it.

They cut to the bridge and the boat’s captain, who’s looking out over the deck shaking his head in something akin to resigned exhaustion. “You guys want some real good TV from Cohle?” he asks. “Get him drunk and ask him to explain philosophy down in the mess. You think this is bad? This is nothing.”

Marty somehow manages to get a hand on his cellphone and pulls up one of his work buddies on memory dial. As soon as he picks up, Marty’s nearly yelling into the receiver. “You home? Yeah? Go turn on the TV—channel 36—no man, right now, right the fuck now.”

A few moments later, the voice on the other end of the line is barking out a laugh. “Ho-lee _shit—_ that isn’t?”

"Oh, it fucking is," Marty says.

Onscreen, Rust turns to stare straight into the camera and draws out a slow, sleepy-eyed blink before pitching his cigarette butt over the side into the water.

"Save the whales," he says, and Marty can’t help but howl with laughter.


End file.
